Islamic Terror is a Threat

The left, SJW’s, and general apologists for Islamic terror are desperate for moral relativism. They are desperate to equate Christians and right-wingers to Islamic terrorists, but they have trouble doing it because there is no problem with Christian terrorism or Right Wing terrorism.

Before I go on, I want to make something clear, I am not making ANY judgments on Islamic theology or the Islamic faith. I disagree with it as a Christian, but I will not be advocating any position which claims the Koran promotes terrorism, or all Muslims or terrorists. I will only be promoting the facts.

It is also important to make clear what we mean and what most people mean by terrorism. Terrorism is the use of violence for political means, but just because something has a denotation does not mean the public will not develop a connotation, and it is that connotation which will define the word in public. Based on the definition of the word, a racially charged murder is terrorism, but a murder does not fall into the popular definition of terrorism. The fact is, when an American thinks of a terrorist attack, they do not think of an isolated incident, they think of a larger attack. An Orlando Nightclub, a Fort Hood, or a Boston Bomber. They also think of terror in an international context because it has to be understood in an international context. You can not understand Islamic terror in Europe and America without tracing back the casual attitudes to the Middle East. Lastly, what is defined as right wing terrorism? This term is very fungible, but I will get into that momentarily.

Groups like the CATO Institute take advantage of these differences to pursue their relativist agenda in defense of radical Islam. A little less than a month ago, CATO posted this article based on this Government Accountability Office report. As this article suggests, the CATO piece goes on to equate right-wing extremists, if not paint in a worse light, to Islamic extremists.

It should be obvious why this absurd. There is no equivalent to 9/11, or the Boston bombings, or Fort Hood Shooting, or Orland night club massacre on the right. On the international scale, we know that eighteen of the twenty most deadly terrorist attacks were carried out by extremist Islamic groups. 2,908 were killed by Islamic extremists, one hundred and forty-three were killed by left-wing Russian supported Russian-nationalists in Ukraine, ninety-five were killed by nomadic farmers in Nigeria, and none were killed by Christian terrorist groups. Sadly, this is not obvious to the relativists because Christians must be as bad. Let us not even open the attempts to draw historical parallels here. Let us leave that can of historical revisionism for elsewhere.

Sadly, these logical points are conveniently ignored since they do not fit a narrative. Because of this, let us analyze the GEO report in the context of the points I brought up before. The first I noticed is the definition of right-wing terror. It is broad, very broad, while Islamic terror is very limited. Off the bat, this makes the comparison more like apples to oranges than apples to apples. The GAO is comparing a massive umbrella term to a specific ideology. If we limit terrorist attacks to those that killed at least two, right-wing terrorists killed fifty-six innocents while Islamic-terrorists killed ninety-six. If we look at the frequency, we see that only a quarter of right-wing terrorist groups killed two or more, while forty-three percent of Islamic terrorist attacks did. In fact, Islamic terrorists killed one hundred and nineteen people in total, more than right-wing terrorist groups which killed one hundred and six. This is not the picture you get from the CATO article or the part of the GAO they quoted. CATO, quoting the GAO, said, “Of the 85 violent extremist incidents that resulted in death since September 12, 2001, far right wing violent extremist groups were responsible for 62 (73 percent) while radical Islamist violent extremists were responsible for 23 (27 percent).” Now, what impression does that give you? What impression do the actual facts give you?

The GAO also has questionable sorting. Take the example that stood out the most, the Planned Parenthood Colorado Shootings. While this shooting was motivated by the revelations that Planned Parenthood sold baby parts, it does not fit into the definition that GAO provides for right-wing terrorism. You certainly do not need to be on the American right, or even pro-life, to think selling baby parts is wrong. Another example of this is the 2014 Los Vegan shooting. The GAO correctly characterizes them as “anti-government” but then makes an assertion that is completely ignorant of political philosophy, that only right-wingers are anti-government. While I believe the left only uses anti-government language as a facade, an objective analysis can not characterize someone as right-wing because they are anti-government, particularly being against the American government.

Lastly, this report damages to ignore left-wing terrorism from groups like Antifa, and particularly, Black Lives Matter which has a death count. A much more useful report would have compared Islamic terrorism to specific types of right-wing terrorism and specific types of left wing terrorism. It is sad to see an intellectual powerhouse like the CATO Institute fall into the trap of anti-Christian anti-right-wing relativism, perpetrated by the American and international left. Promoting these red herrings only helps threats to American liberty and safety by taking our eyes of the actual problem and distracting us to a minor problem.